Pictures: Worst Man-Made Environmental Disasters

An explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant sent clouds of radioactive particles into the air creating a 1,100-square-mile evacuated area into a nuclear dead zone in Chernobyl, Ukraine in 1986.

An explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant sent clouds of radioactive particles into the air creating a 1,100-square-mile evacuated area into a nuclear dead zone in Chernobyl, Ukraine in 1986. (VICTOR DRACHEV/AFP/Getty Images)